HS went from being a board-based tempo game to being a hand-based value game

Multiplayer Discussion
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I started playing Hearthstone during Blackrock Mountain and during that time the game was far more fun to play and far more popular with viewers than it is now. Obviously, age is a factor in the decline of any game’s popularity, but I feel like the biggest factor in Hearthstone’s case is that over the last couple years, the focus of the game has increasingly shifted away from tempo and the board, and toward value and the hand.

The most exciting aspect of Hearthstone, especially from a spectator’s perspective, is fighting for board control by trading minions. Considering that the board takes up about 95% of the screen, this is only natural. In earlier expansions, board battles were much more incremental, tempo swings were much smaller, and board advantage often went back and forth each turn.

At this point, games are much more often won by whichever player achieves a single blowout turn first. Regardless of power levels or play rates, cards like Conjurer’s Calling, Kangor’s Endless Army, Zul’Jin, King Phaoris, The Storm Bringer, Kalecgos, Tip the Scales, and Puzzle Box of Yogg Saron are “bombs” that often end the game on the spot regardless of who was ahead during the rest of the game leading up to that point. Luna’s Pocket Galaxy, while not a bomb itself, gives the person who plays it the ability to make any turn after it a “bomb” turn by playing 20+ mana worth of minions at a time. This is, of course, assuming that the match does not feature Control Warrior, which has the goal - and the ability - of making sure that there is never anything on the board to begin with.

Currently, the most successful strategies involve stalling and PREVENTING minion interactions on the board until you can either win the game in one turn with a single backbreaking card/combo or accrue an insurmountable amount of value in your hand. It has become extremely common nowadays for both players to have 7+ cards in hand and nothing on the board.

I know I’m not alone when I say that this is a lot less fun than the way the game used to be because Twitch numbers don’t lie and many of the most popular streamers who started playing other games never came back. I hope that eventually the developers realize how far Hearthstone has strayed from its roots and bring it back to the tempo-based, board-centric game it used to be.

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Esper control , magic the gathering says hold my beer :stuck_out_tongue:
Nexus of Fate decks , magic the gathering says pour me another one…

Thats why i liked HS , but ye now its getting the same feeling of stalling being the best strategy or go full aggro .(same has mtg when i left for a break)

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Agree as Tempo control is a good win condition, but I would like to always see some kind of counterplay to all plays. Also I would love to see more cards to push card holding greed and 1+ more turns of stalling as this makes for a boring/ frustrating game to play and to watch.

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warrior is so oppressive right now, they can basically remove any board or single strong minion you can setup 4 times over while sitting at 60hp out of the range of any otk then win late game off mech discovery, high armor and reloading deck.

they had a lot of control tools and blizzard basically gave them more.

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Warrior isn’t the only offender, but I see your point and agree with you my friend.

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I feel you. I really enjoyed the RoS meta because it was the most board interactive meta since I started playing during KFT.

SoU has less of that, Rogue is shifting from Tempo to full aggro, Murloc Shaman dropped the backup HagWock value plan that allowed it to play tempo, etc. because there’s no point in not just hitting face as fast and hard as possible, since you will otherwise lose to a one card full board clear followed up with a big combo.

Highlander Hunter with its Subject 9 package is probably the best deck at trying to work both the board and the opponent’s game plan. ZJ is a win condition, but you are not working to assemble a ZJ combo and often win without playing ZJ.

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Nope, HH is fine, mage and warrior isn’t. HH tries to do it by timing secrets BEFOREHAND. Mage just casts a spell, negates your next few turns, and laughs at you as they get 4 turns of immense value just with one card.

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Speaking from my heart buddy.

I wrote the same couple days ago. That HS has gotten to a “who can pull his mana cheat combo first out or counter more” game.

But you explained it a ton better ofc.

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The force into full Aggro is what i cant understand.

They sayd Rogue should not have heal, Taunt or board controll.

Actually they are saying. We want Rogue to play only Full Aggro.

This is the most 1 dimensional flat thinking i saw in HS for years.

Every Class needs all tools of Tempo, Defense and Board controll BUT
in different types.

BEcause every class should be able to play in some way another archtype and not be forced into 1.

Instead of creating room with cards to people explore archtypes. They force more and more with specific cards like the bURgle cards for 5 years!!! And the DEcktype still sucks,

I sayd it many time and will repeat doing. Random will never be a good thing even you build more and more tempo cards arround it like vendetta. Random cuts stragtegy planing and has too much rng fiesta in it.

You want specific cards in specific situations, thats why you deck a specific deck and draw your cards.

If you relay too much on random stuff you will end up frustatet.

Ther are tons of cards you cant even play as a rogue.

Atleast you could use Discover instead of random to allow Rogue to atleast not pick the 1 cards that is totally useless.

But i would be really really glad if we finally leave theburgle road and the clown Rogue,.

Think of a Rogue in wow ind your mind.

And now ad Burgle Rogue to that picture.

We are so far aways from a Rogue class.

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Thanks for the replies thus far. Please keep in mind that this is not a balance thread, and while it is generally accepted by everybody who plays the game competitively that Mage and Warrior are the strongest classes (though combo priest may be the best individual deck at high levels), my complaint is not that X class or Y deck is too strong.

My complaint is that ever since Wrath of the Lich King two years ago, the game has taken a sharp turn toward high- or infinite-value cards/decks/packages that make fighting for board and gaining incremental advantage obsolete. Midrange styles of play are practically extinct now and even decks like the “Midrange Hunter” of last expansion played more like a control deck — waiting to squeeze as much value out of Dire Frenzy and Zul’jin as possible — than traditional midrange decks. Current minion-based decks like Murloc Shaman and Murloc Paladin are completely built around generating infinite value (using Underbelly Anglers to generate more Anglers) or dropping game-ending bombs (playing Tip the Scales on turn 5) and are unrecognizable as midrange decks.

I think this is likely the developers’ reaction to the complete dominance of aggressive minion-based decks during Karazhan and Gadgetzan where minions like Patches, Trogg/Totem Golem, and Small Time Buccaneer were far stronger than the removal options available at the time and made control styles obsolete, but now it has gone too far in the opposite direction to the point where the game is no longer fun to watch because the board is constantly being cleared or frozen.

Since WotLK, the most reliable paths to victory have been through upgraded hero powers or stalling long enough to drop a bomb or generate infinite value (my vote for worst card ever created goes to Spreading Plague which really kicked off this trend). Both of those playstyles are even more boring to play - and especially to watch - than aggro mirrors.

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Yeah, that also annoys me. I don’t agree with all of your points but whenever I watch old Hearthstone videos on YT, I kinda miss the “old days” of curving right and building around with what little value tool you have.

This and last expansion show an immense growth in powercreep in my opinion. So many minions with really strong effects suddenly have normal stats. Why is Underbelly Angler a 2 mana 2/3?! Who tested stuff like that? I’m not saying that everything should stay in a Chillwind Yeti-meta state but just to put things into perspective: It’s really not hard to imagine how this minion would have been a 2/1 for 3 mana in vanilla HS.

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Yeah, this has been my perspective for a while now. I want to fight for board control and have battles between minions, but the game now discourages me at every turn. It really doesn’t feel like you can play an “honest” strategy anymore. Your deck needs to have something that just feels totally unfair, like “what were the devs thinking?”, or else you can’t win.

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you have lot of upvotes but I cant agree. If you want minion battle you can play arena which is basicly only minion battle on the board. Standard has to offer more then minion battles on the board,its only one aspect of the game.

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You can try wild.

Secret mage is T1 and pretty much win or lose by turn ten.

They are a mence. But it is pretty fun to play against them and learn how to defuse their stuff.

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Exactly this, oh god thank you im not alone with this :smiley:

When you say i want to foght for board instantly people pop up claiming its boring.

But that depends on how you implement new stuff.

Whenever people build decks, the first thing is, how can i pull out a big mombo wombo combo synergy this days

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No need to try to argument with the extrem models.

Its not like only yes and no exist.

Even in a minion / board game based meta you can play 95% of all spells that exist.

Its only about the 5% that clearly breaks too much the core rules.

Like pocket galaxy

The murloc card from paladin with mana cheat befor

conjours

Lke i sayd already. This type of too strong mana Cheat Cards are the most toxic thing to the game this days.

Devs need to learn that ther is a ton more to creat fun then Mana Cheat

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This may be so, but when the winner of a major tournament admits on camera that his main strategy was to “draw Luna’s Pocket Galaxy” you have to wonder how much strategic depth is left in the game after all these new “aspects” that have been added over the last couple years. At least in the old days of minion battles you had to manage your resources and and decide when to play for value or tempo or face damage. Those original strategic aspects of the game have largely been lost to make room for these new wacky RNG-based value generating aspects that now dominate constructed play. I feel like the old “Trump Teachings” videos that used to be a new player’s bible wouldn’t even be applicable anymore because Hearthstone is barely the same game that it was 3 years ago.

As a Shaman main, I’ll admit that it’s fun to see which random Murlocs will be added to my hand when Angler is on the board or which spells I’ll get from Hagatha, but those random aspects now end up deciding whether I win or lose more often than how well I play. There are games where I end up playing more randomly generated cards than cards that are actually in my deck. That may be wacky and fun for casual players, but it’s not strategic or competitive.

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Ther are always 2 sides for fun. Many things are fun for the palyer that does the action. But we should alot more look at the opponent how its for them.

That could be also a big design failure. Creating cards too often with only the Acting player in mind instead of looking more to the receiving player.

I can imagine how they playtestet Dr Boom and wher happy with allt he rush minions.

And i cant imagine that someone playtestet this as the opponent that get rushed with the mechs and sayd. Wow this is also fun as an opponent to get beatin by this.

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Exactly why I like Highlander hunter so much. At its essence, it has everything that makes Hearthstone, and the player themselves, feel great.

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I, personally, like change quite a bit.

A game just isn’t fun if all it has is 1 basic gameplan throughout the entire thing. I enjoy playing for board. I also enjoy playing the value game and trying to win through attrition. I also enjoy carefully planning out my future turns till I can pull off my win condition/combo. And sometimes I just like going hyper aggro and slamming face.

I completely respect people who simply just want to play a board centric hearthstone forever, but I think it’s unfair to only have 1 single play style available. Everyone should be able to have a shot at any form of play style they please.

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